Making climate change real at Oakland high school

Ambessa Cantave, with The Alliance for Climate Change , an Oakland-based national nonprofit, gives a hip talk about global warming to a group of students at Oakland Unity High School students on Friday February 11, 2011 in San Francisco, Calif. less

Ambessa Cantave, with The Alliance for Climate Change , an Oakland-based national nonprofit, gives a hip talk about global warming to a group of students at Oakland Unity High School students on Friday February ... more

Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle

Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle

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Ambessa Cantave, with The Alliance for Climate Change , an Oakland-based national nonprofit, gives a hip talk about global warming to a group of students at Oakland Unity High School students on Friday February 11, 2011 in San Francisco, Calif. less

Ambessa Cantave, with The Alliance for Climate Change , an Oakland-based national nonprofit, gives a hip talk about global warming to a group of students at Oakland Unity High School students on Friday February ... more

Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle

Making climate change real at Oakland high school

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The 200 engrossed students at Oakland Unity High School kept their eyes glued to the projector screen and hardly uttered a sound during the 45-minute presentation - the most striking exception coming at the part of the special school assembly that featured cow farts.

It turns out bovine flatulence contributes to greenhouse gases. That was just one of several topics covered in the assembly, which was offered by the Alliance for Climate Education, an Oakland nonprofit that is trying to educate students about climate change one school at a time.

The free production, a video combined with a live presenter, comes across a bit like Al Gore's geeky global-warming slide show, but with a hip-hop twist and, of course, the cow jokes.

"That's been a part of the problem communicating climate change - it's thorny," said Matt Stewart, the organization's marketing director. "It's complicated. We try to present it in a way that sticks."

More succinctly, the goal is to "de-dorkify green," Stewart said.

At the Oakland charter high school Friday, musician, disc jockey and activist Ambessa Cantave employed cute and often funny video graphics to help explain the science behind climate change.

He explained the global-warming effects of carbon dioxide, how it comes from cars and other emissions and how plants, trees and the ocean can help gobble it up - but not fast enough.

"It's like we're conducting a giant lab experiment on ourselves," he told the students, adding that 95 percent of scientific experts agree humans are contributing to climate change, although, he noted, not everyone agrees.

The presentation, which has the scientific stamp of approval of several Stanford University and other environmental experts, offers a primer on climate change, but it's also a call to action.